The name Rollo Stones made me chuckle - the other one should have been called something like B. Tulls or Fabby Forr. I'm far too young to remember the Legend Testers so I'll mention that I've just finished watching all 13 episodes of the 1936 Flash Gordon serial on YouTube. I first saw it when I was 10 in December 1976 during the Christmas holidays - laughably bad special effects and terrible wooden acting but I loved seeing the whole serial again. By using BBC Genome I see it was broadcast from December 20th-31st 1976 and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe was on over Christmas 1977.

I don't really mind about the quality as long as I get to watch something (for free) that I haven't seen for many years. On BBC 2 over Christmas was 'When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth' which was the first film I ever saw at the cinema in 1973. I wasn't able to watch it at the time of broadcast and I don't own a video recorder and it wasn't on iplayer for legal reasons (I assume) but the entire film is on YouTube so I can watch it on there. I don't understand how it can be on YouTube but unavailable on iplayer though - that's the one flaw with iplayer, there are too many programmes and films that can't be shown on it for copyright reasons etc.

Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble advertise that they have "King of the Rocket Men" and its sequels ("Radar Men From the Moon" and "Zombies of the Stratosphere") on DVD. Amazon also lists a DVD set of the Flash Gordon serials with Buster Crabbe.

A lot of fans consider "King of the Rocket Men" to be the last really good movie serial.

The hero's costume was an obvious influence on Dave Stevens' Rocketeer.

There was only one Rocket Man. In the 1949 serial, his secret identity was Jeff King, and he was a member of the Science Associates, an organization of aerospace scientists. Thus, he was "King, of the rocket men." (Republic Pictures must have liked that title gimmick; they used it in "King of the Texas Rangers," "King of the Forest Rangers," and "King of the Mounties.")

In the later serials, the hero seemed to be some sort of government agent, code named "Commando Cody."

Ah, gotcha, TC - that explains it. I assumed (having forgotten the hero's name) that the series' title was perhaps derived from him being the top man of a band of similarly costumed characters - even 'though he was the only 'rocket man' ever on view.

STUDIO 77

About the artist:

From 1985 to 2000 A.D. (little joke there), I contributed to a variety of high profile comics and magazines for various companies.

For IPC/FLEETWAY/EGMONT, I freelanced as a lettering and logo artiston various weekly comics and monthly magazines, and also as a resize comic artistandspot illustratoron pocket books, summer specials and annuals.

ForMARVEL U.K., BLACK LIBRARY, REDAN and USBORNE BOOKS, I again freelanced as a lettering artist, also working as arestoration artistfor MARVEL U.S., restoring and re-creating certain pages of JACK KIRBY art for their MARVEL MASTERWORKS editions.

I also lettered the MARVELMAN sample pages submitted to MARVEL U.S. when they were considering acquiring the character, which - as we all now know - they DID.

Supplied comic strips, cartoons and illustrated advertisements for local business campaigns and newspaper publication on a professional basis since the age of 16. Did my first paid art job for publication at 14 or 15 for Lanarkshire Education Board.

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